Monday, September 3, 2012

Modern use of an ancient farming system

Raised field construction (from Clark Erickson)

Raised fields -- an ancient form of agriculture,
practiced by the Mayas, Aztecs, and the ancestors of the Incas -- was
one of the most productive preindustrial farming systems anywhere. These
fields were abandoned in most areas centuries ago, and largely
forgotten. In the 1980s archaeologists excavated ancient raised fields
around Lake Titicaca in the Andes. Based on their findings, modern rural
peoples started rebuilding raised fields. They turn out to be well
adapted to the natural and social systems of the Titicaca area.

Archaeological interest in ancient raised fields starts with the observation that they were a form of"intensive agriculture."
Urban populations need large amounts of food, and with primitive
transportation methods food had to be grown locally (unless we are
talking about imperial Rome, where food could be shipped across the
Mediterranean from Egypt easily and inexpensively). Under preindustrial
conditions, "intensive agriculture" refers to methods that require
considerable investment of labor in order to increase the yield on the
land. Consider the difference between rainfall agriculture and
irrigation agriculture in a given environment. The construction of
canals and dams, and their required maintenence, can increase yields
tremendously, but at the cost of requiring much more labor than rainfall
agriculture. Irrigation is an example of intensive agriculture, while
rainfall farming is a kind of extensive agriculture.

Figure 1 - Tiwanaku

Figure 2 - Relic fields on the shore of Lake Titicaca

Large, complex urban societies almost always rely on
farming systems with intensive methods to feed their population. The
most common forms of preindustrial intensive agriculture around the
world were canal irrigation and hillside terracing. The earliest cities
in Mesopotamia used irrigation, while the Inka cities of the Andes
relied on terracing (with some irrigation). Aztec cities used both
methods, plus the intensive cultivation of kitchen gardens. But perhaps
the most remarkable form of ancient intensive agriculture were raised
fields. This is a method of swamp reclamation, where long, parallel
field beds are created by piling up dirt and muck from the swamp.
Shallow canals are left in between the raised beds, and these canals
have to be cleaned out periodically by scooping up the muck (a natural
organic fertilizer) and piling it on the fields.

Fig. 3 - Clark Erickson

I talked about Aztec raised fields (called "chinampas") in a previous post.
Here I want to focus on raised fields in the Andes. Tiwanaku was major
urban center in Bolivia near Lake Titicaca, that flourished between AD
600 and 800 (fig 1). The plain around Lake Titicaca today is full of
remnants of ancient raised fields (fig 2) that helped support the
ancient city's population. A number of archaeologists have excavated and
studied these ancient fields (see bibliography below). Here, I focus on
the work of Clark Erickson (fig 3).

Fig 4

Clark Erickson (an old pal from graduate school at
the University of Illinois) began with excavation and mapping of the
fields, but then decided to see whether he could re-introduce the system
for use by contemporary campesinos. In many ways ancient forms of
intensive agriculture would seem to work well in the developing
countries today -- they have high yields, use simple technology, they
rely mainly on human labor, and they keep control of farming in local
hands. This is a low-tech approach to economic development, using
principles pioneered by EF Schumacher in his book, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
(fig 4). It is the opposite of the high-tech approach that involves
mechanized equipment, petrochemicals, and hybrid seeds. While many
development agencies championed the latter approach, in fact it can be
detrimental in poor rural areas. Once the foreign funding runs out,
farmers can't buy or repair equipment, they can't afford the fertilizers
and herbicides, and the result is that a few people get rich and most
get poorer.

Fig 5 - Rebuilding ancient fields

Fig 6 - Ancient and rebuilt raised fields

Fig 7 - Building new fields

Clark managed to get some people to rebuilt and
rehabilitate ancient raised fields (figs 5, 6), and others to build new
fields from scratch (fig 7). He made use of a publicity campaign
involving comic-book like pamphlets with text in both Spanish and Aymara
(fig 8). At first the fields were a real success, and some farmers had
yields higher than those who were following the high-tech development
approach. Although his efforts were opposed by development experts from
the United Nations and other development organizations, up to ten square
km were planted in new raised fields in the 1980s.

By
the 1990s, however, the results were mixed. Most of the farms that had
been built communally, by large groups, had been abandoned. But the
household-level farms, where individual families had built and farmed
the new fields, were still functioning.

Fig 8 - Local publicity material

Clark Erickson has since moved on to
pursue similar research in the swampy plains of eastern Bolivia, the
Llanos de Mojos. He is just one of the archaeologists who have tried to
re-introduce ancient farming systems to modern farmers. Alan Kolata has
also worked on the Lake Titicaca raised fields, and Christian Isendahl
is now working on ancient/modern connections with other indigenous
farming systems in Bolivia. I tried doing something similar once in
Mexico. An agronomist and I wanted to excavate Aztec terraces, study how
they worked, and then try to get modern campesinos to rebuild the
ancient terraces and use them again. We could not get funding for our
project, however, and then we both ended up working on different topics.

The
work of Clark Erickson and the other archaeologists mentioned above are
great examples of how archaeological research on ancient cities is
relevant to the concerns of the modern world. As we search for solutions
to problems of hunger and poverty in the developing world, it behooves
us to pay attention to ancient cities and cultures. Many of them were
highly successful, and they have clues that can help us today.

1992 Prehistoric Landscape
Management in the Andean Highlands: Ridged Field Agriculture and Its
Environmental Impact. Population and Environment 13: 285-300.

2003
Agricultural Landscapes as World Heritage: Raised Field Agriculture in
Bolivia and Peru. In Managing Change: Sustainable Approaches to the
Conservation of the Built Environment, edited by Jeanne-Marie Teutonica
and Frank Matero, pp. 181-204. Getty Consserfation Institute, Los
Angeles.

2006 Intensification, Political Economy,
and the Farming Community: In Defense of a Bottom-Up Perspective on the
Past. In Agricultural Strategies, edited by Joyce Marcus and Charles
Stanish, pp. 334-363. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, Los
Angeles.

1 comment:

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About Me

I am an archaeologist who works on Aztec sites and Teotihuacan.I do comparative and transdisciplinary research on cities, and also households, empires, and city-states. I view my discipline, archaeology, as a Comparative Historical Social Science.
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Twitter: @MichaelESmith
I am Professor in the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University; Affiliated Faculty in the School of Geographical Science and Urban Planning; Fellow, ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems; Core Faculty in the Center for Social Dynamics Complexity. Also, I have an affiliation with the Colegio Mexiquense in Toluca, Mexico.